Define me: Who and Why and You
by Ellisama
Summary: Sasuke commits suicide, ends up in the hospital, where he is visited by many. The parents who abandoned him, the brother who left him. Then Sakura visits, Naruto follows. Breathe in, and close the door behind your past. Speak! /Team 7, slight Sasunaru\


Title: **Define me: Who and Why and You**  
Category: Anime/Manga » Naruto  
Author: Ellisama  
Language: English, Rating: Rated: T  
Genre: Family/Friendship  
Chapters: 1, Words: 7,078  
Summary_: Sasuke commits suicide, but ends up in the hospital, where he is visited by many. The parents who abandoned him, the brother who left him. Then Sakura comes along, and her counterpart Naruto soon follows. Or was it the psychologist that brought him back to life? Team 7, Implied Sasunaru_

WARNING_: The point of view skips a lot. Read carefully: You don't want to miss a detail. Read the note in the end if you don't understand something. _

A siren echo's through the neighborhood as the vehicle approaches it's destination. It grows louder and louder and then he doesn't hear it anymore. It might have seized it's attempt to keep him awake but, just before he loses conscienceless, he knows it isn't true. The world grows possibly even darker, and he gives into it, gladly.

'_Now to cross the Shifting Sands.'_

-

_A dusk, a dawn. A phone call._

-

Kisame and Itachi were sipping tea, like every free moment. The tea wasn't as good in America as it was in Japan, the taste was often artificial, but it wasn't bad all together.

Just as he was about to take another sip and argue with his friend about the whereabouts of their next objective, his phone rang.

'Probably mother.' He thought as he retrieved it from his bag and flipped it open.

"Hello, Uchiha Itachi speaking."

His voice was almost cut off as his mother, started talking to him, incoherent sentences accompanied with coughs and sobs. His mother was obviously very distressed. His mind started to wander. Maybe father and she had another fight. It wasn't too unthinkable, seeing as she was always a wreck after it.

"Mother." He said sternly. "Take a deep breath and tell me what's going on."

At this he received no immediate answer. He figured she was calming herself.

Then he suddenly heard his father speak, extremely soft for the stoic man. His voice was not like it usually was, not stern or radiating authority. It seemed like he was a mile away.

"Son." He said, and Itachi couldn't help but wonder just when his father had started calling him 'son' again, as he waited for the man to continue.

But he didn't. And the silence was nerve wrecking.

When he was at the verge of asking what was going on, again, when his father decided to speak again.

"We need you to come home as soon as possible."

And without even so much of a goodbye, his father broke the connection and Itachi was left to himself and his suspicions.

"What's going on?" His partner asked.

Itachi remained silent and took another sip, his mind too busy to register Kisame's question.

'Sasuke'

He left the shop and Kisame followed him, like always. Only this time, they was going home.

-

_A dusk, a dawn. Breathe in, breathe out._

-

Two eyes fluttered open for the first time in days. His mother at his side, his father on his other. The ceiling above him, white. The worry was evident, yet silence met him.

There's a reason so many people opt for a bland ceiling color: fear. People think they are making a safe choice by painting a ceiling white. They think that will make it unnoticeable. In a hospital every wall is white. Maybe they the one who thought of it wanted to make the patient feel like the walls weren't there.

Yet the white paint encourages people to view the ceiling as a fifth wall. A patient in this kind of hospital sees the white walls for nothing short of what they are: a prison.

He heard a door open, en registered a man walking in.

He didn't see the staring eyes, nor heard the voice asking what was wrong, what _the hell _was going on. He didn't need to, he knew who entered: the long lost brother.

He didn't need his eyes to see his brother's genius mind take in all the information that wasn't spoken. His father's face full of sorrowful misunderstanding, his mother's face full of regret, his own face as pale as death.

The eyes burned on the bandages on his wrists.

His brother was a genius. He himself wasn't stupid either, not stupid enough to _not_ know that that his brother would know exactly what had happened in a few seconds. Being a genius has it downsides: you know things you don't want to know.

It didn't matter for now.

He closed his eyes again, and in his dream he heard a voice call him and the sun sending down an angel, with hair which resembled nothing short of a halo.

_/"Kishi kaisei, wake from death and return to life."/_

-

_Breathe in, breathe out. A question._

-

A man, or a boy, depending on one's view. 16 years old, quite tall, skin as pale as snow contrasting ebony locks. Pupils dilated, face impassive, mouth firmly shut.

Certainly not as pale as he had been when his distressed family had brought him in, still as silent though. He had only opened his eyes a few hours ago, Mikoto reasoned, as she held his hand in a one-sided effort to comfort him.

The question would remain unspoken for a little while longer.

-

_A question, a answer. Denied._

-

When Sasuke had been younger, he had been a happy child. A child so full of emotion and ambition and _hope_ that it dulled the world around him. He had been cute, stubborn and innocent, like a child should be.

She couldn't remember the day her son stopped being that child and became _this_. Maybe it had happened gradually, so nobody could have noticed. Maybe the pressure of the modern world had been too much, it wasn't unheard of these days.

But shouldn't she have noticed?

She always figured Sasuke simply took after his brother and his father, savoring silence over long, heated conversations, cherishing privacy and showing affection through little actions that would make her heart swell.

Why didn't she notice it wasn't there?

-

_Breathe in, breathe out. Don't speak. Yet._

-

Hatake Kakashi was not an idiot. He had long ago been taught that keeping false hope was nothing short of a crime against oneself. He knew the boy wouldn't talk. He wouldn't push him.

The boy that was sitting here in front of him, staring at the ceiling, the white ceiling, or the black tiles.

Kakashi wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't push. Other people would do that for him.

In the mean time, he had to take care of the boy's family, or what was left of that façade he had been living for the past ten years.

A pity, but a job he had to do.

By the time the boy would start talking to him, he would acknowledge him as well.

Two can play that game after all.

Besides, he had two other patients to 'heal', who both needed him more than Sasuke right now.

And with that, another silent session went on.

-

_Don't speak, not yet. A dawn, a dusk, a dawn._

-

Her son, her eldest one, looked at her. Pleading her to say something, to try something.

Itachi hadn't asked. Hadn't said a word to Sasuke. But his eyes spoke for him, all the worry, all the questions…

But Sasuke had yet to speak a word.

Her son, her youngest one, finally lifted his gaze to her. The meeting of obsidian made hers widen and brought blood to her cheeks.

Blood he had lost so much of that night, she still remembered it vivitly.

She remembered the silence. The absent music. Then the screaming when she saw him, pale as death. Red had always fit him so well, he looked like an angel amidst his own scarlet, gazing at her as if it was the last time he'd see her.

He had probably intended it to be like that.

She petted his hair, but turned her eyes away from his.

Now she could never see him without remembering the true color of death.

-

_Breathe in, breathe out. Don't stop before I see you._

-

Light and dark, cold and warm, meetings and partings, sanity and insanity, perfection and imperfection – these things can only be defined when the other exists.

Balance between the two counterparts is considered the challenge, but in reality the search for their means is what is too hard for most. The _real _challenge.

When we no longer need our illusions – instead, we can see the perfection in what is right in front of us.

When Sasuke's obsidian eyes finally widened, Kakashi knew that Sasuke had found his way out of here. Even if he couldn't see it yet. Salvation in a straightjacket. The office's yellow walls would have to say goodbye soon to maybe two of his patients.

A halo of bright blond hair had entered the room, a bright apologetic smile and eyes as clear as the sky on a summers day. _Daidō shōi, _similarities outweigh the differences: a contradiction to his raven haired patient in almost every way, his other patient was.

But their twin stares at each other, identical in their intention, trying to capture the other forever.

Then they both looked away.

There is only life because death exists as a comparison. _/'Now, we can learn how to truly live!'/_

However, some look back at life and find they prefer the cold breath of death, that taunting beauty, and become possessed by it. Some do not have a choice.

Maybe he could make a choice for them, he thought, as he told the blond it didn't matter and that their session was in a few minutes later than usual.

In both death and life now, we find ourselves able to witness the divine…

-

_Breathe in--_

-

Fugaku wanted to ask so many things, but somehow, the white bandages around his son's healing wrists stopped him.

They restricted him, suffocated him by doing so, and he could ask.

Their eyes never met. The words never came.

Sasuke had tried. Good intentions however do not necessarily equal good deeds.

-

_Breathe in, and tell me who I am._

-

A voice that was low and heavy, slightly unsteady because it wasn't used in a while.

"Tell my mother it does matter." The voice said, and Kakashi tilted his head up to meet the eyes of it's owner. "Tell my father I forgot why."

Kakashi rose his brow. It had only been their fifth session, and Sasuke had already spoken. He was impressed, apparently this boy was stronger he had originally thought he was.

Good.

Any other therapist or psychologist would have asked something by now. The books he memorized many years ago to get his decree were screaming at him to ask the standard questions like:

'Why do you want me to tell them, and don't do it by yourself?' or a favorite by psychologist of all time: 'And how do you feel about that?'

The books, the memories of his school, his teachers and everything he had ever swore in order to get this office begged him to at least ask him something, _anything, _just to keep him talking.

Kakashi had learned that you had to follow the books if you wanted to get somewhere in this business, and you had to ignore them if you wanted to help somebody, not the other way around.

"I will."

And then they continued with their own thoughts. Sasuke's weren't so unreachable anymore for him. Prying into somebody's mind had always been his specialty by far. He could easily see that Sasuke was quite practiced at it as well, so he could probably see clearly that it wasn't a lie.

"Only _when_, depends on you."

A seldom showed true smile appeared on both their faces.

A game well played. And a truce, earned by worthy opponents, is better than a stalemate.

They continued their silence.

-

_--And breathe out_

-

A glimpse of life is often accompanied with a glance of death.

So when death opened his door and she walked into his room, he almost couldn't believe how very much alive a girl that had met death over a dozen times could seem.

Another thing he found hard to believe was her hair color. After all, who was born with pink hair. He didn't ask, but wasn't surprised at all when a nurse introduced her as Sakura, and steadily waited for him to introduce himself.

She herself just looked at her with a slight blush on her cheeks, waiting politely for a few seconds.

Then a mischievous smile adorned her lips.

"Wie bent u?" She asked, seemingly innocent.

'_Who are you?_' He recognized the quote from a far away school project about a Frisian freedom fighter, in what seemed another life without white ceilings and staring parents.

He also remembered the answer to that question, and repeated it.

"Dood" A raspy voice echoed through the room and the sun started to shine with a smile, no matter how dark the reply was. A reply was a reply was a reply. _'Death'_

She smiled at him brightly. Back then, he had just though her as slightly weird (but then again, who wasn't here?) and, thank the gods, quite silent.

How could he have know she was called the angel of death by Kakashi?

How could he have known she thought he had caught on to her game?

He certainly didn't know that there had been somebody listening at the door.

-

_Open the door to the kitchen. And take a breath._

-

Sessions with Sasuke were boring for anybody who didn't appreciate a good silence. Kakashi was not one of those people.

But he figured that by now, they actually had to do something.

"Can you cook?"

A normal question, although totally unfitting in this situation. It was probably just as unfitting as those bright yellow walls and a stubborn white ceiling. As unfitting as Sasuke in the world. Probably the reason why said boy answered as well.

"No."

Kakashi stood up and smiled. "Then I shall teach you."

A elegant eyebrow rose."Why?"

To question one's decision. Something one only does when he cares enough. That says a lot more for a suicidal mute than a regular person though.

_/"Let's not forget about life, and why we care. Let's not forget about caring, and why we live."/_

"Because one day in the future, you will be out of here."

No more questions or staring. Instead they ate lunch with knives, and Sasuke noticed how much he had missed them. Or the trust not to use them for anything other than their original purpose.

That, and Hospital food sucks.

-

_Open the door to my room. And take a look._

-

He met the blond boy again. Or rather, the door went open and life brought him back inside. He was as loud and surprising and _different_ as the yellow walls had been at the site of their first meeting. One day he walked into his room, stalked to his bed, and asked him two single syllable words.

"¿Por qué?"

Why?

A day of many firsts: The first time somebody just stalked into his room and asked a question, the first time he answered a visitor, the first time anybody had dared to cross the subject, the first time he spoke Spanish out of class.

But hey, "Idiota" isn't the best way to start a friendship, and because he had already uttered a word, he might as well explain the sun why he wasn't intend on shining again. About the science teacher, Itachi, his parents and that the day he realized that there was no living in his life.

On his turn, the 'baka' told his tale in loud Japanese, as if he didn't care for the world to hear. Sasuke knew different because Naruto told him so.

The blond halo never faded.

A man smiled.

-

_Breathe! I believe, but I can't close the door._

-

The door opened, and the 12th session started.

"Hello Mrs. Uchiha, Mr. Uchiha, Itachi-san. My name is Hatake Kakashi." The man introduced himself politely, keeping most of his face hidden but making his eyes give away the impression that he smiled as he welcomed them inside his office. "I am Sasuke's psychologist"

They greeted him and took a seat in the cramped office with strange yellow walls that seemed to contradict the man's entire being, somehow. It was then that they noticed the other occupant, safely hidden in his own stool, sitting there like it was the most normal thing in the world to examine ones nails in a situation like this.

Maybe it _was_ for him, Mikoto reasoned, as she held a one-sided conversation with Sasuke.

The boy had yet to say a word to either of them, but she disregarded that fact with a sting of pain in her heart.

-

_Breathe out, open the door._

-

Then Kakashi spoke. Before he had spoken, Fugaku wondered why the man didn't say anything. Wasn't he supposed to heal his son? To fix his problem? Not talking was not going to get them there, he figured.

So when the man finally spoke, he had expected him to say more than just one sentence.

"Tell my father that I forgot why." He said "Tell my mother it does matter."

A pregnant pause followed after, with the entire Uchiha family tensing up, including Sasuke. Then all stares focused on him. But Sasuke didn't speak, Kakashi did.

"That is what Sasuke told me a few sessions ago."

Fugaku couldn't take it anymore. He had understood, he really thought he had, that Sasuke needed his silence. That within him some storm was passing because something had happened _that day_ and because of that, he couldn't speak. He accepted that, wanting his boy to recover badly. But hearing the boy had said something to a man that was not only a stranger to him, but also had ordered said man to rely a message to his own family, who spend all their possible free time by his side, was just too much.

He forgot it was the man's job to make his son speak for a moment.

"What did you forget?" He asked, bellowed even. He faced Sasuke, remembering how the boy once cowered under his gaze. The same boy now just stared at him impassive, not moving a single muscle.

He didn't take it, of course.

But still he didn't ask, didn't ask those words the sun had asked yesterday and brightened his day, no his _life _doing so.

Of course, Fugaku didn't know this, and went on with own tirade. He wanted to know god damnit! He wanted his son to come back to life!

"Life goes on!" He continued his rant. "Forgetting something isn't going to kill you!"

Those words kept echoing in their minds even after Fugaku had oh so gracefully delivered them into the world.

Dying had become a taboo after all.

Fugaku tried to take them back, but the words wouldn't come. He barely noticed his wife silently saying 'she didn't do anything.'

And sometimes he wished she did, they both would.

Sasuke remained silent. Time passes.

-

_Breathe in! Confront your darkness!_

-

Death was never a taboo around Sakura, somehow. The girl was surrounded by it in a way that somehow kept that smile on her face. Sasuke was amazed.

Every word she uttered was said to be someone's last. Her knowledge on the subject was beyond comprehension.

Today his parents were present, and a nurse. Let's not forget the nurse who told her her parents were waiting.

"They're waiting? They're waiting for me? Let them wait!"

Fugaku couldn't help but scold the young woman for her words. "You shouldn't talk like that to your parents Sakura-san."

It was there and then that Fugaku stepped into her game. She was always right though, although someone as inexperienced when it came to death as Fugaku couldn't comprehend. Yet.

"_Dieu me pardonnera, c'est son métier."_She retorted in stubborn French. It was only when she found out that he couldn't understand her that she decided to lower herself to his level and translate it for him. "God will forgive me. It is his profession."

"Such disrespect!" His father said.

The nurse interrupted any further arguments."Miss? Please, follow me now."

Sakura's cocky smile disappeared instantly and was replaced by a more gentle and playful one. "Miss, I got what I really went for."

"And that is?" Fugaku pried, slightly enraged by the clever, lunatic 16 year old that seemed to make his impassive son live.

"_Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être"_ She said, her face matching her gentle voice, but her eyes not on the man but on the son, who's eyes were full of interest and _life_ "I am off in search of the great perhaps."

Only Kakashi heard her whisper the last words. "Je pourrais l'avoir trouvé dans tes yeux."**(1)**

Kakashi didn't speak french.

-

_Silence. A dusk, a dawn_

-

Naruto visited him a lot. He figured he had nothing better to do. He knew the feeling.

Today, he brought a woman with him. A friend, he told him. Sasuke didn't believe him. It was obvious that there was some kind of attraction between them, though it didn't seem sexual.

He already knew her. He know her all too well. Like life to death, somehow pink was attracted to yellow to white. Sakura to Naruto to Sasuke. After all, a rose is a rose is a rose.

And a family isn't always born out of a mother and a father. Sometimes out of blood, not in his veins but outside them.

Blood on the curtains of his room. Blood on the sheets of his bed.

Blood in his veins, running to his heart, pumping a little faster when he saw them.

-

_A door opens, a door closes. Finally._

-

Most of the time, he would just look at her. Somehow, she couldn't remember his gaze had ever been much different. He had worn it day after day for the past how many years?

It did lit up sometimes. She remembered the girl. She remembered the boy.

It made her wonder how everything had started. And maybe when it would end. But she decided against asking him anything each and every time she saw him.

They had time, Mikoto reasoned, as she did nothing.

Again.

-

_Breathe, not doing it is a crime_

-

A sudden turn, a sudden departure.

"Ille facit" She said to her psychologist just before she and Naruto left the building they had grown accustomed with. Their time of healing was over. _"He will do it"_

Kakashi opened locked the door behind them whispering something. "Me l'aspettavo"

"_I expect it to happen"_

-

_Breathe, do not forget._

-

5 weeks of white ceilings. A week without each other. A week without the sun, a week without the girl with the dubious hair color. Blood on the covers again.

A scream. His mother's

Darkness and a realization: there is no life nor death in this room. There is no greater hell than that.

-

_Calm your breath and take another one._

-

The sheets are white again. Her husband is even more quiet, she herself is beyond hope.

Wasn't it going to be alright? Hadn't he lit up slightly?

New bandages kept her husband from speaking. Sasuke was only paying attention to a mobile cellphone he had gotten from some nurse.

Lifeless eyes staring at a lifeless, inanimate object.

And waited.

Itachi cried himself to sleep that night.

-

_Don't close that door without me by your side_

-

The light returns.

The light cries, a golden halo of bright hair and lightning as the storm outside went on and on and on.

"You said you'd live."

"I told you, only truth. For 16 years, I sought only this day. Nothing else existed... until I saw you. Then everything changed." A confession followed.

Love, Silence, Naruto. Never spoken in one sentence, never used in one sentence. Until that day.

"And to think I no longer believed I ever would."

Naruto dries his tears. The stubborn boy is back. A boy who won't bend in the wind, nor break like Sasuke did. "But I don't want you to die."

A smile. "That's the most beautiful thing you could have ever given me."

-

_A dusk, an even brighter dawn. Nothing is the same again._

-

Sasuke was staring at the display of his cellphone again. Itachi had found out the psychologist had given it to him.

The eyes were a lot less lifeless, and he recognized a certain feeling hidden underneath them.

His little brother was waiting for something.

-

_A dusk, a new dawn. It's going to be a bright day._

-

Itachi saw the new light, and tried to talk to him after seeing him connect with his brother so many times. But talking had never really been his forte, so how to start a conversation with someone with who you share practically nothing?

"So, what are going to do with the rest of your life?" He started awkwardly. "Do you want to be a cop or something?" Sasuke had wanted to be a cop, somewhere in a faraway past.

"Life!" The boy exclaimed loudly, like he always seemed to do. "Don't talk to me about life!"

He didn't seem to take it the wrong way though. He was just loud and so very much breating.

Itachi tried again. "Don't you know what you want to do? It's very important to think about your future."

"Life is too important to be taken seriously." The witty reply was something he hadn't expected, but the effect was there.

His brother seemed to respond. His pale complexion lit up ever so slightly and his lips finally parted. The longest sentence he had heard his brother speak in his 5 weeks of hospitalization, the only sentence.

"I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it."

The words echoed through the building, though spoken without any force behind them.

His mother broke into tears, and Itachi barely registered the breaking sound of his heart.

Sasuke returned his gaze to her, and spoke again. After the first step was made, the second was easier it seemed. "Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?" He looked at her as if she did the strangest thing in the world.

Like he hadn't expected her to cry, or to care. Then he refocused on Naruto

And with that, the ivory complexion became lifeless again.

-

_First words. Take a deep breath and speak them. Breathe!_

-

Hope was for the foolish, some said. If it were to be true, it definitely applied to Naruto. It was idiotic to say the least to wait for somebody who was almost diagnosed clinically mute to say a word. Voluntary even. But foolish as it may be, he seemed put strength out of it, something that Sasuke admired above all, so he kept quiet about the subject aside from a rare 'baka'.

Another day, another try, it seemed.

Yet a ray of light seemed to follow him, and a halo of golden hair shone upon him as he spoke. Now pleading him not to die again, in his own way, which often seemed more like ordering him to live.

Not that other's could understand a word he was saying, showering Sasuke the same words in all languages he spoke. "Let me say it too you," he would say without using his usual loud proclamations, but this time his little knowledge of languages.

"Minä elän teille, ja minä kuolen teille." His father's language, Finnish. Sasuke spoke only two words Finnish. Yet understanding he did.

"Por ti vivo y por ti moriré" His mother's language, originally from spain, yet it had reached Japan as well. Sasuke spoke Spanish.

"Ik leef voor jou, en ik zal sterven voor jou." Dutch, a language spoken by Sakura, who taught it to Naruto apparently. Sasuke only knew one word Dutch, a word he had uttered to the same girl who taught Naruto.

Finally, English, the language of the streets where the boy had been dumped after his parents death. "I live for you, and I will die for you."

Even though the words, so private, were spoke in a room with the entire Uchiha family and Sakura and Kakashi, it didn't matter. Few could understand a word Naruto uttered.

The rest remained silent.

"Vivo" **(2) **He replied. He said no more.

Kakashi spoke Spanish.

-

_Breathe in! Make it worthwhile!_

_-_

38th sessions in between vibrant yellow walls. A white ceiling, but now forgotten.

One question. The second and last one Kakashi was ever going to ask him as his psychologist.

"Are you going to do it again?"

Present: everybody he cared for. The time of mute tears was over.

"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."

A rare smile. A blessing.

"Minä elän."**(3)**

And Naruto smiled.

Sakura remained silent.

Death closed its door. Naruto opened his.

-

_Stop Breathing. Start living_

-

Four people left the hospital after the ebony haired boy was brought in 6 weeks ago with a lot of noise and panic.

Said boy seemed at peace now, a strange fulfilled smile adorning his face while he followed his psychologist together with the two other children they had come to know as Naruto and Sakura.

The hospital door closed behind the three of them. Mikoto could see them approach their vehicle and she felt her son and husband tense: they knew that child, their son with a color on his cheeks and a smile on his face. A sight they hadn't seen for god knows how long.

"_Now, we can learn how to truly live!"_

_The blonde was as loud as ever._

"_Let's not forget about life, and why we care. Let's not forget about caring, and why we live."_

_The man as calm as ever._

"_Kishi kaisei"_

_Their son, smiling, as if he had done nothing else his entire life. As if those 6 weeks had never happened._

_The girl was silent. Death had been fair. Now it was Life's turn to be fair for once._

Itachi smiled as well. A new dawn.

_-_

_**Nokorimono ni wa fuku ga aru.**_** Luck exists in the leftovers.**

**-**

In both death and life now, we find ourselves able to witness God…

Define me: Who and why and you.

Ask me who I am and I shall answer Death

Ask me why and I shall tell you Life

Be yourself and be with me.

You! Vivo! Y me definen!

Forever, Define me, and we will be just that.

_-_

_Notes:_

**(1):**"Je pourrais l'avoir trouvé dans tes yeux."(French):** I might have found it in your eyes/ I could have found it in your eyes. **_This is after she spoke François Rabelais'_ _famous last words concerning his search for the great perhaps. _

**(2) "**Vivo"(Spanish),** I live. **_Caligula's famous last words before he was murdered._

**(3): "**"Minä elän."(Finnish):_I live. Famous last words of Aleksis Kivi._

_(if you want the total list of all 'famous last words' used in this story, contact me. It's too much to simply put down here.)_

* * *

_I hope you guys understood a word I was saying. If not, try reading it again after reading these notes._

_It's basically like this: This entire work is full of references and symbolism. In the beginning, Sasuke commits suicide: he tries to cross the Shifting Sands, which is a dessert you can't cross in the Wizard of Oss. It is also a direct reference to the authors' last words: "Now I can finally cross the Shifting Sands"_

_He wakes up at the hospital and 'foresees' a future event by hearing the sun call out to him in Japanese. This is actually a symbolism for Naruto, and Naruto will later say those words. The same goes with the other words between the slashes: /Future event/_

_Than we switch point of view a lot, avoiding Sasuke's._

_Mikoto: she symbolizes all she doesn't say, all regret and everything she should do but doesn't. When Sasuke askes Kakashi to tell her 'it does matter', he was trying to tell her that sometimes doing nothing can be the crime. Her reply 'I didn't do anything!' symbolizes that._

_Fugaku: He symbolizes the incomprehension the people you were intending to leave behind feel. Some people say afterwards: 'But life goes on.' And Sasuke forgot just why it always 'just goes on'._

_Itachi: Itachi symbolizes the regret but also the second chance._

_Sakura symbolizes__** Death**__. All her sentences are famous last words. It was hinted in the story, but I don't know if I actually got it through._

_Naruto, as Sakura's companion, symbolizes __**Life**__. All his written down sentences are quotes as well. _

_Kakashi symbolizes the new chances in one's life, as he offers them to Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura as their psychologist, and later as their leader or father figure._

_Kisame and the nurses symbolize the out standers, those who know too much to be unconcerned, but too little to be involved._

_Yellow: The color of life. Little mentioned in the beginning, because there is no life. But then the yellow walls of Kakashi's often become more and more important and eventually even 'vibrant.'._

_White: It is the color of sasuke. From his skin, that seems pale and lifeless at first, and the walls who lock him inside the hospital. To the white hospital doors he closes._

_Pink/red: colors of Sakura, and the color of death. Little used in the story, since the absence of life makes up for the absence of death._

_In the end, four new people walk away from their past, symbolized by the hospital and the closing doors behind the three. They walk to the future, and the change is noticed by the out standers, this time symbolized by the Uchiha family, who were just parking the car._

_The last paragraph is a little title explanation: __**Define me: Who and why and you.**_ _Sakura asked who he was, Naruto why he did it, and together, his parents, brother and psychologist, they were able to pull him out of the darkness, and give him meaning._

_As what happened to make Sasuke commit suicide in the first place: He didn't care anymore. He had grown lifeless, yet not dead either. There is no greater hell than the zone between those two, so he decided to take it into his own hand. Reasons for this lifelessness were shown in the story, so search my readers._

_Sakura and Naruto have both seen their fair share of death as well, that is why they are both so easily to break into Sasuke's life._ _They both speak many languages because life and death are universal._

_-_

_This was the longest one shot I ever did, and I hope you understand it a little. Do not worry, I myself am not suicidal. I hope I will never be._

_However, I do agree with many of Sakura's sayings. Originally, she said a lot more, but I scraped a few to make her seem less suicidal. She does symbolize death though._

_The moral of the story: A rose is a rose is a rose: Sakura is Naruto is Sasuke: Death is Life is you. Others define you, make your existence._

_I hope you liked it. Please review your opinion. BTW, should I do a sequel?_


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